


Severance

by Anythingtoasted



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Endverse, Fallen Castiel, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-06
Updated: 2013-03-06
Packaged: 2017-12-04 11:59:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/710552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anythingtoasted/pseuds/Anythingtoasted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>end!verse, angst. Castiel loses his wings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Severance

Cas’ knuckles are white.

The bathroom isn’t.

He’s gripping the edge of the tub; rearing up, arching in pain, and there are feathers everywhere – his great black wings barely fit in the tiny room, and they knock tubes and bottles from the shelves with surprising strength as they frantically flap. Dean can barely sit, for flinching, but he is poised all the same between Cas’ shoulder blades. The angel’s naked back is trembling, hard. He looks tiny and gigantic at the same time – his huge wings, beating with strength, with blood and fury – and his tiny human body, thin and wan, the bones standing out along his spine. Castiel shouts at him.

“ _Dean!”_ He yells over the noise of wind and things crashing to the floor. “ _Dean, please!”_ His voice is like Dean has never heard it – strained and halting. He’s groaning.

Tentatively, Dean lifts his hands. He places one between Castiel’s wings; in the centre of his back, from where the two black columns emerge. The other, he uses to take hold of the branch of Castiel’s left wing. It’s blood-hot under his hands; he grips it gently. Castiel hisses a breath of pain.

“Hold on tighter, Dean.” He says, breath sharp. Dean, a sense of unease building in the base of his throat, hangs on.

“Okay.” He chokes. “Okay, Cas. I’ve got you.” He says – and this time it’s no comfort. The wing under his hand wrenches upwards and he almost lets it go – he bites his tongue trying to hold on.

Castiel, head bowed, takes a shaky breath. He lifts his hand from the tub, and the rough clink of metal as he does makes Dean’s lungs draw up in horror.

Castiel reaches behind himself, to where Dean is holding the wing in place – and with his eyes screwed shut, with his skin shaking spasmodically under Dean’s hand, his legs trembling where he’s squatting next to the bath, he starts to cut.

The reaction is immediate – like separate beings the wings starts to flap harder, unfurling; the wing outside of Dean’s grip starts to beat and smash against the bathroom walls violently, catching Dean hard in the shoulder and almost sending him sprawling. He grits his teeth; he can’t look away from Castiel sawing efficiently through the thick flesh of his wing, from the thick,black-red blood dribbling out of it, the black feathers detatching, swirling around them, sticking to the blade.

After endless moments of Castiel sawing at his own flesh – after spaces of time wherein Dean could only hear the endless  _snick_ of blade on skin, the beating of Castiel’s free, frenzied wing, the sound of Castiel’s gentle, involuntary sobs – the angel stops. There’s a puddle of blood underneath where he’s sitting; down his back are trailing rivulets of dark liquid.

“Dean.” His voice is resolute. Quiet.

“Yeah?” the wing is all but slack in his grip. He won’t let it go until Cas tells him.

“You have to –“ he pulls the blade away from the wing. His shoulders tremble. More blood drips thickly onto the bathroom floor. He sighs. “Please.” A plea this time, soft. “You have to –“ he makes a motion with his hands, briefly letting go of the bath. Dean, still holding the wing, shudders at the very idea.

“Cas, I  _can’t.”_

The angel turns and his eyes are deep-set, and weary. He’s breathing raggedly. His entire body  _shakes._ “You  _have to.”_ He says, and Dean, in the face of his misery, can’t bring himself to break his promise.

He leans forward, and presses a kiss to the base of Castiel’s neck. “I’m so sorry.” He says against his skin, and Castiel just says, again,

“ _Please._ ”

Dean adjusts his hands on the wing. From where the limb extends there is a ‘trunk’, of sorts; like the beginning of an arm. Dean takes it in his hands and all the power, all the strength in it, is gone. Beneath his palms are the hollow bones of a bird, though they are wet, and slick, with the angel’s blood.

There are tears in his eyes. He blinks them away. He braces himself for the longest moment he has ever lived.

Then he presses down, and snaps the wing.

The sound that comes out of Castiel is raw; a frenzied shriek, a scream; the tiny bones crack under his hands with such ease that he almost can’t believe it; they splinter and shred and shards of them stay on his hands, sticking wetly.

He lets the wing drop, and it slumps to the floor. Only a few strands connect it to Castiel – and the angel reaches back to separate them, a tiny breath escaping him with each tiny  _crack_ of bone.

And then it’s gone. On Castiel’s left side, all that remains is a strange, incongruous shaft of bone, sticking up. It doesn’t move. It probably can’t.

On the floor, beneath Castiel, is spread out the huge shape of his left wing; motionless, iridescent, its black feathers a thousand different colours in different lights, like an oil spill that spreads out across the floor, that curls against the wall, folding in on itself. Limp.

Dean can’t speak. Tears are dripping down his face, and neither of them are making any noise, but for their desperate, hoarse breathing.

Castiel slumps against the bath. He lets his forehead hit it, with a dull  _thump._ His mutilated back drips on.

Then he raises his head. He takes a huge breath. He turns to Dean, eyes skipping over the dead part of him, which now lies dormant on the floor, as if it never belonged to him at all.

“Okay.” He says, voice more sure than his eyes look, over his shoulder. “The other.” He rasps.

Dean kisses him, then, at a loss for anything else to give him. He makes Castiel’s face wet.

“I’m so sorry.” He says, fervent. “I’m so sorry, Cas,  _I’m so sorry_.” A chant, a promise. A prayer.

Castiel pulls away from him. Steadies himself, gripping the bath.

“The other.” He repeats. 

* * *

Days later, when he is healed enough to stand, Castiel digs out the last few bones tethering them to him, without Dean’s help. He files them down, wordless; he stands in front of the bathroom mirror when he’s done, when Dean has sewn him up, and looks back at himself without expression. 

Wrapping the last of the bandages, he looks at himself, and nods. Then looks to Dean, and does the same. 

Dean, silent and watching, his fingers tight on the doorframe, looks back at him; a question. 

The angel nods a final time.

“Let’s go.” He says. “Come on.”


End file.
